Sunday, October 6, 2013

Best Performances of the Week: Nashville's Scarlett and Bones's Sweets

Welcome to the third edition of Best Male and Female Performances of the
Week. This is a weekly update that will occur, for the most part, on
Thursday’s – or shortly thereafter – once I’ve finished watching and reviewing
the past week’s worth of episodes, where I will single out one male and one
female performance that I believe merits special attention for the week. This,
like my reviews, will be based solely on my opinion of the shows I watch in a
week, and if you don’t like who I’ve picked, well that’s just too bad for you,
go off and make up your own mind.

This week my choices came out of a
pot of sixteen series’ (and if you don’t know which, go check out my reviews
from the last week). For any not caught up inand Bones, please feel free to
exit promptly from this blog. I am not a spoiler free source for shows. THIS BLOG MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS! Proceed
at your own discretion.

Best Female Performance of the Week:

Clare Bowen as Scarlett O’Connor in this week’s second episode of
the second season of Nashville. Although
I quite enjoyed a number of female performances this week, particularly on this
series, as well as the character that’s quickly becoming my favourite female
this season Charlie on Revolution,
Bowen’s characterization managed to stand out above the rest. Though, to be
fair, I might have chosen Spiridakos had I not highlighted her performance last
week.

This week, Scarlett played most
prominently against three characters on Nashville:
Gunnar, Avery, and – most significantly – Deacon. The way Bowen just subtly
made her character appear awkward against Gunnar was quite realistic for the
character. She also managed to almost play down any reaction to Avery, who so
obviously wants to get back in her good graces. But what stood out the most was
how stubborn she was acting opposite her character’s uncle, as he struggled
with possibly never playing the guitar again. The way she pushes his character,
and stands strong against him, despite how weak-willed she was early last
season when it came to Avery, not only shows an improvement in the character,
it demonstrates how much stronger her acting has gotten.

While this is the first time I can
recall ever witnessing her acting skills, I still think the very fact Bowen is
able to play Scarlett is quite astounding, and I would definitely be willing to
check out her other performances after this. Also, can I just highlight how
awesome her hair looks? I mean, I’m completely jealous of how she kind of
resembles an old time movie star, with a vintage kind of style. Also, her voice
is wonderful, being that I am not a fan of country music.

Best Male Performance of the Week:

John Francis Daley as Dr. Lance Sweets in this week’s third episode
of the ninth season of Bones. While I
at first thought I was going to choose Justin Hartley in his short appearance
as Patrick on Revenge, Daley won me
over with his performance as Sweets this week.

The variety he was able to intone
into his character this week was just astounding. Normally, Sweets is this
happy go-lucky kind of guy, with this almost geeky sense of humour, but after
Pelant used Sweets profiling of his coworkers to their disadvantage, he was
left guilt ridden and needed to feel useful to society. Enter, this center that
he’s been giving back to the community through. It creates this whole new
Sweets, that’s more driven, and has more of a backbone than he previously had. He’s
standing up for himself and becoming his own person, without having to rely so
heavily on Booth in the field.

One particular reason I think
Daley’s performance this week stood out above all was because of how good he is
at a more dramatic role. As I said, normally this character is a lighter kind
of persona, but with all the drama that Pelant has created, Daley is able to
play his character at a deeper level. Humour and a light air are certainly
useful when dealing with the often strange and gruesome material that Bones handles, being that it is about
murder, but drama is also necessary. Finally being able to see a deeper version
of Sweets is a refreshing change, and something I’d very much like to see more
of with Daley. I know he writes comedy, but he can definitely do drama.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, that’ll be all for tonight.
My apologies for both the lateness, and if it’s not quite as good as the last
two, I’m running on three hours of terrible sleep, and having worked an eight-hour
shift. I’ve been up since nine thirty this morning, had three red bull, three
coffees, and been through several spurts of burnt energy. I’m tired, had to go
to a great uncle’s funeral, and turned out to be the only one of my first
cousins to actually go (and I come from an Italian family). You can tell all
this by the over hour long time it took me to write what will likely be my
poorest blog review… Okay, maybe that medal’s already been given to one of my How I Met Your Mother or New Girl reviews. Anyways, to make a
long story short, no Haven review
tonight, unless I wake up fully rested in the middle of the night (okay, the
middle of my night, aka most people’s day). Okay, I’m signing off now before I
write any more ramblings down.